Liboncatipu, aka Microsoft Puzzle Hunt 7, aka How I Learned to Stop Sleeping and Avoid the Chess

Right, so I spent all weekend at Microsoft :)

I want to write so much about Puzzle Hunt, but I'm not sure I can really capture it properly. I had overslept, so I was all nervous about getting out there and being on this team of almost entirely total strangers (I knew Matt and Drew, but the other 7 guys were all people I'd never met before) and having them already hate me because I was late. Turns out I needn't have worried... while it was a little odd at first to just be in this conference room with a whole ton of strangers, Drew told me how the puzzles worked and that I should go find something to work on, so I did.

( And herein I talk about the puzzles themselves for a while )

( And I'll explain a little more about how it worked and the experience )

At the end we all went to the closing ceremonies, where we got to cheer for puzzles and have them explained by the creators, and see who won. Our final standing was 8th place and we were still pretty damn happy about it. We were one of the teams to make it to the final ending meta-puzzles, and so they read our team name out, but of course couldn't pronounce it. "Lib-un-cah-TIP-you?" "Close enough!" (It was apparently "Lee-bone-CAT-ee-poo", after a word that Matt had accidentally gotten as a wrong answer to a puzzle last year.) Hehe. It was still fun. Turns out that my friends Kevin (Babbitt) and Michelle were on the 6th place team... and I had just said to Drew, "I wonder if I know anyone here? I bet anything if I turn around I'll see someone I hadn't seen in a while" so he says, "Deanna, turn around" and sure enough, I see K&M smiling and waving at me. We had a good laugh over that one.

Yar. I am *so* in for next time's Puzzle Hunt :)